Page 112 - A History of the World in 25 Cities
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The good news is that people are thinking about ways to combat climate change, encourage plants and animals to thrive, and reduce air pollution.
Plants absorb carbon dioxide in the air, so the more of them there are the better. In southern China, the new Liuzhou Forest City will be covered in 40,000 trees and almost one
million other plants. The city-island nation of Singapore, known
as the ‘Garden City’, has a rule that all new buildings must include
plant life in the form of vertical gardens and green roofs. And if you want
to plant a tree in Los Angeles in the United States, the city will pay for it.
Instead of using fossil fuels, cities could use energy from the sun, water, wind or waves. Electricity generated from these energy sources doesn’t add to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The cities of Aspen in Colorado and Burlington in Vermont in the United States, as well as the whole country of Iceland, are already powered completely by renewable electricity.
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